‘You honor the dead by going on. You live because they don’t get to’

Glenn is alive. Glenn is alive, and The Walking Dead will never be the same. Glenn is alive and I’m kind of pissed about it.

First of all, let’s get the logistics out of the way. It appears that when he and Nicholas fell off the dumpster into the zombie herd, Nicholas fell on top of Glenn. He was devoured. Glenn got out from under him and got under the dumpster, killing a bunch of zombies to create a barrier between him and the herd.

The Walking Dead: season six, episode six – Always Accountable

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After sucking up Nicholas’ innards, the zombies got distracted by some noise off in the distance and eventually wandered away. Glenn was under the dumpster for an entire night before shimmying out and running into Enid.

Ugh, Enid.

So, the logistics seem sort of plausible. But wouldn’t the zombies be able to smell him? Or did his wall of zombies mask his scent? Anyway, I’m really annoyed that Glenn is alive, as much as I love him as a character and think this increasingly dark show really needs his humanity.

The thing about The Walking Dead that made it so amazing was always that deaths were permanent: they always had an impact. When one of the bigger characters would die (think Herschel), he was never brought back to life, nor was there ever some sort of cliffhanger about whether or not he survived. Dead was dead – well, until they came back from the dead as a zombie, but whatever.

A lesser, more conventional show would put the main characters in peril so we would worry about how they would survive, but we would know they would make it out somehow. The Walking Dead was never that show. It would rather kill off a main character than pull a lame switcheroo.

Until now. And not only did the show make us think that Glenn was dead ; it waited several weeks to tell us he was alive. The producers took his name out of the credits, even, and did everything they could to pull a “gotcha” on viewers.

I assume that we’re supposed to be like: “Oh yay! Glenn is alive.”

Instead, I’m kind of like: “You jerks. This isn’t the deal we made.”

Now, every time someone is about to get shot or eaten, we’ll have to question how serious the show is about killing off its main cast.

Anyway, for better or worse, Glenn is alive and Enid finds him and gives him some water. He decides he’s going to take her back to Alexandria because she can’t survive on her own (though she has shown remarkable skill so far). She whines and complains about how everyone dies and it’s so sad and she doesn’t want to deal anymore. Whine, whine, whine. She sounds like a My Chemical Romance cover band.

The teenagers on this show are the worst. The best part of the confrontation is when Enid pulls a gun on Glenn and then calls him an asshole when he takes it away.

“You’re the one who pulled a gun on me and I’m the asshole?” he said.

Teenagers.

Eventually, Glenn convinces Enid that they need to live to honor the dead that have gone before them. When they get back to Alexandria, they see the zombie herd surrounding the town and Enid freaks out again.

“It’s so hard,” she says, putting the Smiths on full blast and slamming the door to her room.

“Shut up, let’s go,” Glenn says.

I’m paraphrasing here, but you get it. Still, they send some green balloons into the sky as a signal that they are out there and alive and everyone is looking up in the sky and sees them and is very hopeful and it’s wonderful and then all hell breaks loose.

‘We’re in here together … Everything else is just excuses’

Rick has a big problem with the residents of Alexandria and he doesn’t want to include them in any of his reindeer games. He’s intent on schooling them on how to survive, but he will never trust them like he trusts his main squad. When he proposes another way to lure away the herd to Michonne, he doesn’t want any of the townspeople to help.

Michonne sees how that is a problem. She wants them to integrate into one society, but Rick still sees it as us versus them. They have a sort of similar reaction to Deanna’s plans for the future. Rick is all: “Isn’t that sweet, but no.” And Michonne is all like: “I think we really need to do this to make this place work.”

Again, paraphrasing.

Rick gets a talking to from the construction worker guy who tells him to have faith in the Alexandrians, that they were scared of him at first but now they’re coming around to his point of view. But just moments after, when stupid Spencer decides to try to make a run for it over the zombies and Tara tries to save him, Rick scolds her, telling her: “You almost died once for these people.”

That just shows that he views the Alexandrians as outsiders, as second-class citizens not worth risking one’s life for. That’s a big problem.

But the show has a similar problem with the Alexandrians. We know Deanna and Aaron and now Dr Denise, but we haven’t really gotten to know any of the others, like construction worker guy. We still don’t even know the name of the red shirt who is convalescing in the “hospital”. We don’t know the name of the lady who guards the pantry. We only know the citizens who have an impact directly on Rick and his crew.

How can we agree with anyone other than Rick when the writers are illustrating that these other characters don’t matter that much?

‘Things aren’t as simple as four words’

I think the highlight of the episode was Rick, Carol, Michonne and Morgan’s roundtable discussion about when it’s right to kill and when it’s not. Rick and Carol obviously think that everyone who opposes them should be shot on sight and Rick is (rightfully, I think) miffed that Morgan didn’t incapacitate the Wolves who later attacked Rick and put his life in danger. Even if Morgan didn’t kill them, wasn’t there an alternative between their death and letting them go?

Morgan, of course, thinks that “all life is precious”, the four words Michonne is referring to in the quote above. He defends his position but admits: “I don’t know what is right anymore.”

The most interesting position is Michonne’s. We know she is generally kinder than Rick, but is also a total badass who will do what it takes to survive. She’s saying that killing is wrong but, in this new world order, it can often be justified. She thinks there is some middle ground between Morgan’s “never kill ever” and Rick’s “shoot first and ask questions later”. She’s wrestling with figuring out a moral code, a greater philosophy for the way they live now.

I think that’s what everyone needs, and what we the viewers need too. We need someone to say, “Here are what we think of as the rules,” and sort of codify when it is acceptable to kill and when it is not. That way we know whether someone is breaking the rules and deserves to be punished. Right now, everyone is espousing their own dogmas and they’re often in opposition, which is not that great when one is trying to build a real society. If anyone, it’s going to be Michonne who gets there first, and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with.

Still, Carol is my absolute favorite. I loved nothing more than her on the porch with Judith on her hip seeing Morgan and Dr Denise going off to treat the Wolf that Morgan has locked away in the basement. She’s such a wonderful double agent, posing as this innocent mother figure but who really could burn the whole place to the ground if she wanted to.

The scene with her and Sam in Jesse’s house was a little disconcerting, however. He’s looking for some sort of guidance from her about when people become monsters and when they don’t. She tells him that they have to keep killing in order to not become monsters, but clearly all the death is taking a psychological toll on both her and Rick (and certainly Sam, who looked like hell).

At the end of the episode, she confronts Morgan about the Wolf in the basement, and this is going to be a battle royale for the ages, people. Screw the cliffhanger: this is what I’m tuning in for next week.

‘What you should be scared of is living’

We don’t get to see much of Rosita, which is a shame, because her speech to Eugene, toward whom she obviously has lots of pent up frustration, was absolute genius. He tells her he’s afraid of dying, but she tells him that is the easy part; then it’s over. It’s living that’s hard – something we heard over and over again in this episode. She says the disappointment of cowardice and his friends dying around him is even worse than it would be to get his guts ripped apart by a bunch of zombies. That finally seemed to have an impact on one of the show’s worst characters.

Since we’re talking about awful people, can we talk about what a jerk Carl is to Ron when Rick is teaching Ron how to shoot? Carl just keeps rubbing it in his face how much more he knows and how he’s better than Ron. Carl, this is a guy that obviously hates you. Why do you have to go make it worse? Teenagers are awful, man.

Even worse than Carl’s haircut. Carl has the audacity to tell Ron: “You have to be strong enough to wait for your moment.” It seems Ron does wait and was going to take his moment to shoot Carl in the back of his awful mullet just as the bell tower in front of the walls fell down, crushing the wall and letting all the zombies in.

The falling structure is set up nicely throughout the episode so viewers know it is going to happen but the townsfolk don’t, and the credits roll just as the zombies are about to storm into the town. It just shows that no matter how prepared we think they might be, disaster is always just a moment away.

Dead Ends

They have a whole tank of helium and they didn’t even do one funny voice? I’m sorry, but the apocalypse isn’t that bleak. If you have a tank of helium and balloons, then you do a funny voice. That’s just the rules. And what would be funnier than an existential conversation done in Alvin and the Chipmunks voices?

Is it bad that I really, really, really, really, really, want someone to kill Carl?

Why was Gabriel putting up signs about his prayer meeting at the solar panels? Aren’t there like 50 people in the town? Can’t he just knock on doors and let everyone know personally? Rick can’t tear apart a personal invitation.